‘You mean are we going to follow your orders and not Madame, our mother’s?’
‘Bingo.’
Alastor glanced around at his brothers. ‘I don’t know about you, but it felt good killing those guys this evening. It felt like we were finally getting somewhere. I don’t want to lose that rush. Right now, I’ve got it. But if we sit around for the next seven days just watching people and getting eaten alive by fucking mosquitoes, I’m going into town to rob me a bank just for the kicks.’
Rudra glanced at Abi. ‘And you say we’ve only got a small window of opportunity to use the warehouse?’
‘According to what the watchman said, six days. But we can cut that down to twenty-four hours after the big boss phones up tomorrow and deduces that his own people have probably run off with his investment.’
‘Then I say we go with Abi. If we all stick together, we can square it with Madame, our mother, later.’
Abi reached back and punched him on the shoulder. ‘That’s my boy. To infinity and fucking beyond.’
75
Sabir stood at the very top of the pyramid and looked out over the Yucatan. It was nearly dark now, but just enough residual light was left in the evening sky to suggest the immensity of the landscape stretching away below him.
‘What do you see?’ The Halach Uinic was standing beside him.
‘See? I see forest. And then more forest.’
‘No. Nearer home. Across the way there.’ The Halach Uinic was pointing towards a second pyramid, four hundred metres across the tree-dotted plain in front of them. He moved his hand in an elegant arc to encompass the even smaller pyramids surrounding it.
Sabir shook his head, as if some extraneous thought were intruding on his attention. When he spoke, his tone was matter-of-fact. ‘I see a family.’
The Halach Uinic took a pace backwards. ‘You see what?’
‘I see a family. We’re standing on the father pyramid. He probably represents the sun. And across there is the mother pyramid. She’s probably the moon.’
‘Why do you call her the mother?’
‘Look. You can see she’s a woman by the way your ancestors built her. There are two buildings high up either side of her flank. Those are her breasts. Then further down, between where her legs would be, you can see a slit. That is her vagina. And on her left. The two matching pyramids. Those are her twins. The smaller pyramids are her other children. They all stand in the shadow of their father, who overlooks them. Christ, they’ve even got eyes.’ He turned to the Halach Uinic. ‘It’s all there. One has only to look.’
The Halach Uinic had gone pale. ‘Where did you hear this?’
‘Hear it? Where should I have heard it? I never even knew this place existed beyond seeing it depicted on a map. It’s obvious, though. Anybody can see it.’
‘Obvious to you, maybe. But in my entire life, no one has mentioned this to me before. Ever. It appears in no book. It is written up in no scholarly papers. The site is not spoken of in this way even by the priests.’
‘Well I’m probably wrong then. But you asked me what I saw. And I see that clearly. The buildings seem alive to me. As if they’re breathing, almost.’
Ixtab, who had been standing behind the two men and listening to their conversation, moved forwards. She gestured to the Halach Uinic, and then placed one hand on her heart. ‘You must tell him.’
The Halach Uinic turned towards her.
‘He is the one. You must tell him.’
‘You are sure?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then speak.’
76
‘I have a story to tell.’
The Halach Uinic was standing just in front of you, at the very pinnacle of the great pyramid. As he spoke, his voice was snatched up by the pyramid’s acoustics and transported over the waiting crowd.
Earlier, while the Halach Uinic had been occupied with one of the gringos, Tepeu had touched your arm to gain your attention. When you had approached him with your ear he had whispered many things to you about the pyramid and about the Halach Uinic. He had told you, for instance, that the pyramid had been built as a mouthpiece for the priests, and that the priests had been selected, from birth, to be mouthpieces to the gods. That the Halach Uinic was both their temporal leader – the so-called ‘true man’ – and also their spiritual leader – the Ah Kin Mai, or ‘highest one of the sun’. For one person to hold both of these titles was unprecedented, said Tepeu. It was a measure of the severity of the coming times. Everything must be concentrated into one vessel.
You had no idea what Tepeu was talking about, but you did not tell him this. You did not wish to abuse his faith in you. So you nodded at everything he said, and encouraged his speaking.
Then, unexpectedly, the Halach Uinic motioned to you to approach him. You moved towards him without hesitation. But as you walked, you were already asking yourself questions.
What were you really doing here, standing high above the crowd as if you were someone of importance? You were only a campesino, with no land, no money, no education, and no knowledge of anything beyond the tending of a vegetable plot and the harvesting of a field of chayotes. What worm had entered into you to cause you to question the Halach Uinic while you were travelling together in the car? If you had not insisted that if you were to be offered back the book, the gringos should also be offered back the crystal skull, then none of this would have happened. There would have been no gathering. There would have been no ceremony. You would have been free to return to Veracruz and to your mother – if you had been able to make it back, of course, without food, or money, or transport, and with no real understanding of the geography of your own country.
Now the Halach Uinic was speaking out in Spanish, and not in Maya. This was a good thing. You had tried to understand Maya when Tepeu had demonstrated it for you, but you had failed entirely. Not a single word had made itself clear to your understanding. You looked back over your shoulder and you saw the woman with the damaged face translating for the two other gringos, and this was good also, because the gringos, too, needed to understand what it was the Halach Uinic was offering them. They needed to be free, as you were, to either agree to, or to refuse, the Halach Uinic’s offer. This much was plain to you.
Next, the Halach Uinic was holding up your book. He began to tell the story of your family’s guardianship of the book over many generations. He told how one of his priests, who had been trained to read the language of the ancient Maya, had read the book, and that it contained a story that everyone needed to hear. But that the priest could only recount this story with your permission. For the book was yours, he said, not theirs. You had been chosen to guard it, and not a Maya. Just as the gods had chosen a gringo to discover the thirteenth crystal skull.
These choices made by the gods constituted a message, the Halach Uinic continued – a message with two tongues to it. The first tongue told that the Maya were in no way special. They had not been selected over others. They took no precedence in any hierarchy. They were not ‘chosen people’. Like a priest, their function was simply to be the mouthpiece for whatever the gods, and through them, the one god, Hunab Ku, had to tell the world.
The second tongue referred to the end of what the Halach Uinic called the ‘Long Count’, which he described as the end of the last great 52-year cycle of the serpent wisdom – the final ‘sheaf of years’. This, he said, was the only time when the first day of the 365-year calendar and the first day of the 260-year calendar intersected during the 52 years of the Calendar Round. It marked the end of the Fifth Great Cycle. The end of the Fifth Sun.
Your head was beginning to spin at this stage. Why was the Halach Uinic concentrating on these things?
